2-996-095 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Outrage upon Sir John Coventry", by T.H. Maguire, in the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1860. Engraving after a painting. 'Sir John Coventry, who was created a K.B. at the coronation of Charles II., having indulged in a joke on the King's mistresses, the Duke of Monmouth and others laid a plot to avenge the King's dignity upon him, by a most brutal outrage...Sir Thomas Sandys, O'Brian, and thirteen others...at midnight on the 21st of December, 1670, attacked Sir John in Pall-Mall...Sir John...defended himself bravely for some time, wounding several of his assailants but was at length overpowered and held down while they cut his nose to the bone. In consequence of this barbarity an Act was immediately passed...to prevent malicious maiming and wounding, which is still known as Sir John Coventry's Act...The composition gives an admirable idea of a street row in those lawless times, when every man was arbiter in his own quarrel, and the sword gave the law in the public streets of the metropolis...The arrangement of the figures is skilfully contrived. The murderous scene is dimly lighted by means of a torch held by a man who sits on a wall.' From "Illustrated London News", 1860.